Harvard’s Data Privacy Lab Launching Health Record Bank

My guest column posted today at NHINWatch describes the imminent launch of a health record bank (HRB) by the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard. Notably, this is the first time that a major academic institution has hosted an HRB. All stored data will be double encrypted (like the two keys of a safe deposit box) to ensure that only the account holders have access. That, along with the secure and neutral environment, should go a long way to engender consumer trust. As it becomes more widely understood that successful health information infrastructure depends on having each patient’s comprehensive records in one place under the patient’s control, you can anticipate that additional HRBs will be established following Harvard’s lead.

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To date, many have focused on the cheglanle of digitizing the vast amounts of health data in the current health system and on the one-way transfer of existing data from the system to the patient via EMRs and PHRs.a0 Google and Microsoft have launched data warehouses for personal health information, and a few large institutions have embraced this one-way flow of information. The Mayo Clinic recently partnered with Microsoft HealthVault to provide patients access to their medical records, and Kaiser Permanente has been very successful with their “My Health Manager” offering.